On 22.12.11 11:02, Johan Hendriks wrote:
Stefan Esser schreef:
Am 21.12.2011 22:49, schrieb Johan Hendriks:
If you tune up FreeBSD to use the GCC 4.7 compiler, or downgrade linux
to 4.2.1, then that will tell me nothing about FreeBSD vs Linux.
The gcc version distributed with FreeBSD was chosen for license reasons,
not for technical reasons. If you are OK with installing a GPLv3
licensed compiler on your systems, then just do it and take advantage of
the improved code generated by it.
It does not matter what the decission is to use the old compiler, it
is a fact that the base comes with 4.2.x
Does that mean we can not compare/benchmark against other
distributions because they use GPLv3 stuff.
If you intend to compare operating systems 'as shipped', then forget
about comparing third party programs on top of these operating systems.
Compare only any software that is already available with the operating
system, as shipped.
There is plenty of software in the base system and this software is
specifically different (say) in FreeBSD and Linux.
Anyone made such comparison?
No, i want to know where standard released FreeBSD stands against
standard released Linux distributions.
If you compare benchmark userland applictions, then it is fair to use
the latest compiler for the userland software also on FreeBSD.
But what if the ports tree defaults to LLVM, then again we want to
know what FreeBSD does against a Linux distribution.
Why because that is what most of us will be using...!!
It is pretty easy to tell the ports system to use latest gcc, as
described here
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/custom-gcc/article.html
If we start to compile all the ports with gcc 4.7 to be on par in
comparising and benchmarking, why spend all the time getting LLVM as
the default compiler for ports also?
Because, FreeBSD attempts to be as GPL free as possible. GPL is
incompatible with many of the applications of FreeBSD.
Why not take that effort into making the WHOLE ports tree to compile
with GCC4.7?
This has already been done. See above.
Reason, because FreeBSD goes the LLVM route. That is a decission
FreeBSD is making!
LLVM, as well as GCC are just choices in FreeBSD.
What FreeBSD is making is, to make it safe to use LLVM to compile
everything on FreeBSD, including the kernel.
As you may have already noticed, some ports require to be compiled with
a specific version of gcc, or a very specific compiler -- there is
nothing wrong with this -- this is external software after all.
And that choise will be the FreeBSD that is used in comparising and
benchmarks on the net , not the utterly overcopiled and tuned FreeBSD
against stock Ubuntu or whatever Linux distribution.
Earlier on this thread I mentioned, that FreeBSD and Linux philosophies
differ. While Linux (well, some distributions, to be correct) will try
to optimize certain parts of the OS/applications in order to do well in
benchmarks -- FreeBSD takes a different approach. The FreeBSD (and BSD
UNIX, in general) approach is "do the right thing". This may produce the
results slower, but the environment is more stable in general and in the
long run, the results noticeable better.
This argument, by the way reminds me of the AT&T vs BSDI lawsuit, where
at the time UCB was involved there was lengthly discussion (at court),
about "sloppy programming, but we had to have something for the
deadline" (AT&T) vs "well, we have designed the architecture we think is
appropriate, there might be few unimplemented things, but we are working
on it".
Same goes for the scheduler! and all the other subsystems FreeBSD has
choosen, that makes FreeBSD.
What about the scheduler?
Yes you can use a more advanced compiler on FreeBSD, BUT you can do
that on Linux also ,so where do you stop?
Can you compile the entire Linux system, kernel and userland and
external packages with LLVM?
Are you going to spend a month to compare a fullly tuned up FreeBSD
system against a Linux distribution?
I would do that, if:
- I have a task for which I need tuned system (that is, hardware would
be at limits);
- The application is available on both;
- There is evidence or suggestion that the application under Linux will
perform much better;
No because the users will not spend months tuning and recompile there
servers.
They use the FreeBSD version that comes with the CD!
On servers? :-)
And that we want to compare/benchmark against a Linux distribution.
No, we don't. We run our servers, we don't want to compare/benchmark
them with Linux for no reason.
We want however to identify design or implementation weaknesses in
FreeBSD and fix these. This rarely happens by comparing to Linux
distributions. There are better things to be observed in say, Solaris.
If we were selling FreeBSD, we would be interested in publishing
benchmarks that demonstrate how superior to Linux it is. We would tune
FreeBSD to beat Linux in most benchmarks available and we will ignore
the fact that in real-worls scenarios it will be worse. For.. we would
have already made the sale.
Now, you will say "but Linux is free". :)
Thing is, the goal most Linux distributions have is to dominate with
'market share'. The primary purpose is to convince the software
developers to port their software for Linux. This has had some positive
results but in general -- not enough.
There are better 'open source' approaches and the FreeBSD ports
collection proves that.
Or do we say, well we are on par, but it is not fair, yes we used the
latest releases, but you can not blame Linux because they are still
using GCC.
Depends on what you want or need to measure ...
I am mainly talking about the out of the box comparison, because that
is what most sites will do when doing a benchmark.
they want to know if the the all new version of FreeBSD can compete
with the latest release of Ubuntu.
That are the benchmarks you will see on the net.
Compete on what?
If we want to look good, FreeBSD must make sure there released version
gets on par!
Everything has its cost.
We all know FreeBSD is quite conservative with its default settings.
It is always better to have reliable OS, that can boot on almost any
hardware, not crash for no reason and once it is up and running, you can
always tune it to your taste.
Maybe you are looking for an "tune FreeBSD for your usage" type of
application?
Maybe we need to set some default settings less conservative.
If such settings could make FreeBSD less reliable or less stable --
definitely NOT.
But i do not know if that is good just for the numbers!
Another idea, you may make your own FreeBSD derivative, such as PC-BSD
or FreeNAS (both, special-purpose setups, optimized for what they do)
and compare it with someone else's Linux distribution.
By the way, there is FreeBSD based "Linux" distribution: Debian kFreeBSD
-- however weird this sounds.
Has anyone compared recent PC-BSD with Ubuntu?
Daniel
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